Allah on Ethics

It is easy to forget, given the fireworks, that the real point of today's presser with Trump was for him to announce his solution to conflicts of interest arising from his business. Allah didn't forget.

If you want to defend this dubious arrangement, your best move is to shrug and say that Americans knew what they were getting when they voted for him. And increasingly, that is the chief argument you hear in his defense. Not that a trust run by his family is ethical, not that it’ll stop special interests from funneling cash to Trump through legal means, but essentially that Americans don’t care anymore if the president is corrupt or not. I mean, the alternative last year was Hillary Clinton. We might as well let lobbyists start dropping off burlap bags filled with cash with dollar signs on the side on the White House doorstep.

He has a good analysis of the weaknesses of this particular approach, which he still says is "better than nothing."

UPDATE: TNR isn't too impressed either, although I'm not sure I buy their argument that it makes things worse. Donating revenue to the Treasury may in some sense represent Trump 'merging his business and the Federal government,' but not more than donating any other foreign gift to the Treasury -- which is a standard practice for US officials receiving foreign gifts.

8 comments:

raven
said...

Burlap bags of cash, eh? That is exactly what Barry Seales told Terry Reed. He was dropping burlap sacks of cash to the Clintons out of his airplane. Of course, he is unavailable for comment, having been shot dead. Apparently Seales thought he was untouchable because of the dirt he held on various figures. He was the guy who took the photo's that showed on TV, of drug cargo being loaded in Panama, in order to justify taking Noriega out. Those photo's sealed Seales fate.

"Compromised, Clinton, Bush, and the Cia". by Terry Reed. A very interesting read, especially as it predates the Clinton and Bush 2 presidencies. True? I don't know, but if not, the guy should have gotten an award for fiction.

If Trump does follow through with his donations to the Treasury, he'll be an order of magnitude ahead of his...BFF...Warren Buffet who'd rather see his fellows' taxes rise than him make such a donation.

Donating revenue to the Treasury may in some sense represent Trump 'merging his business and the Federal government,' but not more than donating any other foreign gift to the Treasury -- which is a standard practice for US officials receiving foreign gifts

I'm not sure I buy into their being a meaningful similarity between donating profits from a commercial enterprise you previously invested your own funds (or borrowed funds you are legally obligated to repay, and for which you pay interest) and donating gifts you did nothing to earn, and which cost you nothing.

Those are two very different things. Really, a universe apart.

I also don't buy the argument that none of this matters, but the argument that even the possibility of corruption (by which I mean quid pro quo) amounts to actual corruption is really weak. Particularly when made by folks who - just a few short weeks ago, when we were talking about Clinton - saw such a bright line that has since vanished without a trace :p

I'm not sure I buy into their being a meaningful similarity between donating profits from a commercial enterprise you previously invested your own funds (or borrowed funds you are legally obligated to repay, and for which you pay interest) and donating gifts you did nothing to earn, and which cost you nothing.

An excellent point, and one I don't think I've seen anyone make in the various commentary. It is a little hard to shake out, of course: let's say that foreign governments and companies with business before Trump start staying in Trump hotels, when they had before stayed in Hiltons or whatever. Is this a gift? Not in the sense you divide out from earnings. Yet the practice is clearly a transfer of wealth to a government official from whom you want something, which looks like a potentially corrupting influence.

So Trump's answer to that is, "I'll donate the money to the Treasury." But that leaves him with rooms he's "renting" at a loss, as he receives no revenue for them and they can't simultaneously be rented to anyone else. I don't see how that makes things worse, pace TNR. It sounds like the ordinary practice of giving whatever you receive from the foreign power to the government as property-in-common, but it does so at a real cost to him (whereas a true gift would be just be a handwash if you gave it over to Treasury).

This is kind of a sketchy area of business ethics. If foreign officials are charged the same rates as everyone else, it's hard to see corruption in that (frankly, unless they take up residence in his hotels and run up insane bills, I'm not seeing massive windfall profits). I don't think there's a reasonable suspicion of someone reaping benefits they wouldn't already be able to earn on their own.

But I don't like the looks of it, either so I understand your point. I just think it's a tad ironic for the "NO QUID PRO QUO = NO PROBLEMO" contingent to suddenly be horrified by mere optics :p

Allah's beginning to annoy me. As Cassandra notes, the standing leap from the fact that blind trusts are intended help prevent one type of corruption to "the president is corrupt" is not part of an honest argument.

Having everyone with a business and recognizable brand be locked out of the presidency is worse than the possibility that one (of many) mechanisms to help prevent corruption might not be usable in all cases. It's not as though blind trusts always prevented such corruption. If they did, we wouldn't have the ugly spectacle of people doing nothing but holding government office while becoming multimillionaires. Book advances, board seats for relatives, and all the rest of it... oh, but it's not corrupt, because they had a blind trust!

When Americans are so arrogant they think they have enthroned a Messiah of the Right this time, there's no saving them, no matter if Trum gave all his money away. It isn't Trum that is evil or corrupt, but the American people that is now evil and corrupt. They don't even know it, like slaves in Slavery 3.0, they think they are free.